At the cross-point between fundamental changes in the communications paradigms, coexistence between different generations of mobile systems, intensive competition between operators, the need to optimize network resource usage, and user's aspiration to access, interact with and manipulate a personalized set of services in a genuine seamless communication environment, ITU-T traffic engineering for networks supporting Personal Communications has to develop an adequate path for producing related Recommendations in the E.750-series - the series dedicated to traffic engineering associated with terminal and personal mobility services. This path should reconcile such issues as usefulness to operators, soundness of theoretical approach, and timeliness in covering advances in system design, among others.

Key to the process of progressing the E.750-series is the understanding of the role of traffic engineering in the radio planning and capacity dimensioning cycle. This role identifies traffic engineering as an enabler for helping in locating regions for optimal resource usage and stable operation, with the final setting of operation parameters decided in the field and dictated by radio transmission and coverage constraints. As a consequence of the complex relationship between traffic engineering and radio coverage planning for different mobile systems on one hand, and the ever increasing support of computer-aided tools for addressing the stages involved in coverage and capacity planning on the other hand, a modular structure of the traffic engineering procedures seems appropriate. This structure should help in matching the traffic models to the characteristics of the network architecture and design of the radio interface.

The need for increased efficiency in network resource usage calls for mobility, traffic demand, and dimensioning models which are comprehensive (e.g. reflect the self-organizing capabilities characterizing the design of advanced mobile systems) and incorporate a sufficient degree of realism while remaining robust and manageable.

Finally, ITU-D SG 2 has requested to ITU-T WP 3/2 its cooperation to prepare a Handbook on Teletraffic Engineering which would make it easier to understand by less experienced engineers in the field the traffic engineering concepts and in particular the ITU-T Recommendations on traffic engineering of mobile networks.

a) the continued penetration of mobile services, both transaction-based and positioning-based;

b) the competitive environment in which mobile services are being offered;

c) the trend in the increasing share of mobile-related traffic with respect to the overall traffic volume;

d) the need to capitalize on investments in the infrastructure of mobile networks throughout the transition from present mobile systems (e.g. GSM) to more advanced ones (IMT-2000 family);

e) the need to provide a seamless communication environment where the end user is guaranteed extensive roaming possibilities and is shielded from the technicalities related to accessing and interacting with services supported by different system generations;

f) the difficulty to provide a uniform and constant QoS to mobile services irrespective of the actual application type, operating environment and mobility behaviour;

g) the propensity of the customer base to trade-off, under given conditions, a reduced QoS against reduced tariffs;

h) the increasing availability to the end-user of means for measuring, monitoring and negotiating QoS, even during the course of the same session;

i) the inception of multimedia services supported in the mobile domain;

j) the increasing role of signalling in supporting mobile services;

k) the availability of means for personalizing the user service profile and maintaining a controlled communication environment (VHE, Virtual Home Environment);

l) the increasing importance of IP-based networks;

m) the identification of dedicated spectrum for providing the capacity needed by advanced mobile systems, both for the terrestrial and the satellite segment;

n) the need of tutorial material which would make easier to apply by less experienced engineers the ITU-T Recommendations on traffic engineering for mobile network.

1) What new or revised Recommendations are required to relate the user mobility and re-attempt behaviour, and the operating environment with the traffic demand?

2) What new or revised Recommendations are required to translate traffic demand into capacity expansion of the available radio spectrum? (For example, methods need to be described for cellular systems on how to modify the cellular layout/design and frequency reuse patterns to increase the overall channel capacity.)

3) What new Recommendations are required to accommodate the characteristics of multimedia services and the adaptive bandwidth techniques underlying the design of advanced mobile systems?

4) What new Recommendations should be started to assess and monitor the end-to-end service quality related to Personal Communications services, also considering aspects related to roaming and multi-operator domains?

5) How should new and revised Recommendations be structured to favour the automation of the capacity planning cycle?

6) What existing Recommendations on traffic engineering methods for Personal Communications need revising or deleting because they are no longer useful?

7) What tutorial material on ITU-T Recommendations on traffic engineering for mobile networks is required for assisting ITU-D in the preparation of a Handbook on Teletraffic Engineering?

New and revised Recommendations will be produced in the E.750-series, with particular emphasis on dimensioning methods considering the technical aspects characterizing current and advanced mobile systems. In parallel, tutorial material on the ITU-T Recommendations on traffic engineering for mobile networks will be provided to assist ITU-D in the preparation of a Handbook on Teletraffic Engineering.

A project management approach, in which each project has firm objectives and limited lifetime, will be followed. For the Handbook related work an ad hoc group, which integrates the corresponding projects of Questions 7/2, 8/2 and 9/2, will be organized. A detailed workplan will be maintained and new projects will be created according to needs. Initial projects and target dates are given below.

4.1 Within Study Group 2

A close liaison is required with the other two Questions of WP 3/2 (Questions 8/2 and 9/2) as well as with other Questions of Study Group 2 having activities closely related to traffic engineering, in particular those on routing (Question 2/2), Quality of Service (Question 5/2) and Network Traffic Management (Question 6/2).

Liaison is also required with the following groups:

• SG 11 on B-ISDN, signalling, switching and Intelligent Network;
• SG 13 on B-ISDN, including B-ISDN network performance parameters;
• SG 16 on speech/video encoding techniques with a potential for use in wireless communications;
• ITU-R TG 8/1 on service quality aspects of the IMT-2000 family;
• ITU-D SG 2 on the Handbook on Teletraffic Engineering;
• Other international standardization and consensus building bodies (e.g. 3GPP, 3GPP2, ETSI, UMTS Forum, IETF, etc.);
• ITU-T Focus Group on Traffic Engineering for Personal Communications;
• International Teletraffic Congress;
• International and pre-competitive R&D projects in the mobile and personal communications domain (e.g. EU IST Programme).